


Redamancy

by Beeblebrox



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-09-08 22:15:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8865433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beeblebrox/pseuds/Beeblebrox
Summary: If the after credits scene from the s3 finale was just a bit longer.





	

First it was the smell, he would recall, that he woke to. Something savory, mouth watering. But it was pain that superseded any thought of sensory pleasure. His mouth and his head, and _god_ his shoulder too. It took him an awful long time to come to the conclusion he was alive.

He didn’t know where he was. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be there.

It took more effort than he thought necessary to open his eyes.

A breath shuddered from him. He could feel his hands against his sides, shaking. He was not in a hospital.

He put his weight on his left side to shift up on the unknown bed and over its side. His legs hurt when he tried them out, barefoot, on hardwood floor. The fall, the impact; he’d ended up entering the water feet first. Somehow. Any other way and his neck or back or some other fatal breakable part of him would have likely snapped.

His toes curled involuntarily on the cool wood. He limped and wiped at a tear that had gotten all the way down to his chin, tickling him with its taunting. He let his hand reach to the right side of his face to feel stitches there, his tongue danced over some that were inside his mouth.

He navigated unknown hallways to find stairs to the floor below, a cold sweat breaking as he recognized where he was. He’d never been beyond the entryway and office. When he set out to find the kitchen he was waylaid in what was clearly the dining room.

“Will.”

It took him a moment to spot her perched beside the grandiose table spread.

“Bedelia.”

He didn’t think her name came out very clearly, with part of his face sewn up and bruised badly. She had trouble nodding a straight up and down motion. Could she be drugged?

He scanned over what he assumed to be the main course.

When he realized what he was looking at, his brain lagging at the intake, all he could do was moan. _Oh god_. He limped closer to Bedelia. Her dress dipped low down her front and slit high up her side. There was a bandaged stump sitting where a leg should be.

“I’m surprised he set it out so soon.” She said with a small smile. Will’s stomach curled.

The door from what he suspected was the kitchen opened. He heard now the sizzling of something inside and felt a rush of scents wash over him. He had been suspended in confusion so far, but with this he finally landed in reality. Albeit off-kilter.

Hannibal backed out of the kitchen with a bottle of champagne in hand. They were only half a room away from each other when he turned enough to notice Will. He stopped when he did.

“I didn’t hear you come down.” Hannibal said simply. Will couldn’t speak even if he had the words to describe the amount of anguish he felt at the sight of Hannibal.

“Didn’t even pick up a whiff?” Bedelia asked in apparent high spirits. “Did you find out about his abnormal scenting ability?” She directed at Will. “It’s how he found out you did _not_ kill Miss Lounds, he smelled her on you. I think that’s where this all really went sideways.”

“It’s not like you to be chatty, Bedelia.” Hannibal said, maneuvering himself into the room. He poured her a glass.

“I believe it’s my appendage on the dining room table and the copious amount of drugs in my system that has me chatty. I can’t be blamed.” She turned her gaze to Will, “When you stop pinching yourself over there I’d like your opinion. Does this not all feel rather... disingenuous? Contrived? Frantic, even?”

Will swallowed painfully and took in the facts before him.

Hannibal was in the clothes he’d changed into when they’d gotten to his cliffside hideaway. There was the blood of Dolarhyde mixed with his own, and Will’s. The gunshot wound stain was like a black hole.

As for Will he surmised Hannibal had stitched and cleaned him up, put him in a clean shirt. His pants were still damp. He couldn’t have been out for more than a day. He hoped. It was light outside though, he should have checked a clock.

When Hannibal reached the opposite side of the table Will went for a glass and poured himself water from an ewer. The two glass items clanked together with his unstable hands. The metallic taste of blood dissolving into the water that passed his lips didn’t stop his eyes from closing reverently. He poured himself another.

“Hannibal tells me you killed the Dragon together.” Will didn’t look at her. “He’s not said much else.”

He can’t fault her for asking for an explanation. As much as this situation could have been expected, Will’s alarm bells were ringing. This would be one of the first places the police would look, after they tracked the police car they stole and only found Dolarhyde’s body. A flash of blood red wings made him wince.

“Would you like something for the pain, Will?” Hannibal asked.

“No.” The water had rejuvenated the walls of his mouth, he thought that sounded rather like the actual word. With malice, even.

“It would be aspirin.”

“You mean: not whatever you gave her?”

“You have gathered she’s self medicated before, I haven’t introduced anything new into her system.”

“Except you did it _to_ her,” damn did it hurt to talk, “you _cut off her leg_.”

Hannibal’s eyebrows rose, he looked between Will and Bedelia. He seemed to think it shouldn’t be surprising.

“If you play you pay.” Bedelia repeated Will’s words, but he shook his head. Their eyes locked then, and he felt a thread of connection spring up between them. “I wonder.” She began curiously. “I wonder why you’re both here. I wonder why you’re dressed in one of my shirts, Will, cleaned and put back together. You... _consummated_ your relationship through slaying the Red Dragon, no? But maybe...” She looked between them and asked the next question very slowly. “What happened afterwards?”

Will remembered it suddenly and vividly. He’d had an ear over Hannibal’s heart; he was damned to remember its beat for the rest of his life. How it had begun to slow when Hannibal sighed in his arms. That’s when he closed his eyes and dragged them over. “We were supposed to die.” Will said, almost a whisper.

“Will’s latest failed attempt to kill me. The cliffs at my home, he pulled us over.” Hannibal said amusedly, though looking at neither of them.

Bedelia’s urgency brought both their gazes upon her. “ _Us_? How?” She asked. “How did he do it?”

Hannibal was in a giving mood. Will reminded himself Bedelia was in the process of likely being eaten limb by limb. Hannibal would be his most honest self in this situation. “After killing young Francis we reveled in the moment. Will embraced me, likely with the intention to kill us.”

“ _Will_.” There was fear in her eyes, shock too. He knew how it sounded. “What I asked you before, is this proof that you do?”

“It’s not that kind of ache.” He said slowly. She didn’t look convinced.

“Clearly.” Hannibal guessed at what they meant. “Our Will is a sly boy.”

Bedelia looked strangely torn at that moment, like she wanted to say something to the contrary. He realized the kind of leverage a guerrilla therapy session could afford her. Or at the very least time for the police to come knocking.

Hannibal moved then from his place opposite Will to sit down at the other end of the table, across the long stretch of it from Bedelia. Will’s anxiety level raised as he too moved to sit down at the center place setting. Bedelia would have to look over her roasted leg to address them.

“I take it you don’t know what to do with Will.” Bedelia continued after a few tense moments. “I find it hard to believe you don’t see the weight and meaning of his final gesture.”

Will had been angry with Bedelia for laying with the monster, allowing him to metaphorically digest her. Surviving that digestion with a _harrowing_ tale. He had been angry she didn’t kill Hannibal for him, just observed. She could have killed him in his sleep, none the wiser. But he also completely understood why she didn’t, which had been the most maddening of it all. Regardless, most importantly, he didn’t actually want her to die, not like this. From what he knew of her she was troubled but not particularly evil. She was curious and detached, but didn’t go out of her way to cause trouble or harm others. Her trouble was likely induced by Hannibal to begin with.

Alana’s voice rang in Will’s ears, telling him about Hannibal’s promise to kill her too. That he implied he’d take Margot and their child along with her.

None of these people deserved that. They’d all just tried to survive Hannibal, it wasn’t their fault they didn’t understand. And the simple fact that, each in their own way, they had even _tried_...

“You let Dolarhyde almost kill you.” Will said to his empty plate. “You said you knew he was there, that he followed us. You would have let yourself die.”

“Yes.” Hannibal answered.

“While I watched.”

“Yes.”

Will brought a shaky hand up to rub his forehead, then his mouth. “After everything, you would have let _him_ kill you?”

“You did ask nicely.”

Frustration burned the back of Will’s neck. He didn’t have time for games. But then, did he really need to know? Wasn’t it better not knowing? He had been willing to die without knowing the things unsaid, but here he was alive and kicking.

“With the Dragon dead you would be have been able to go back home, Will. Your wife and son survived his attack, you could have gone back to that life.” Bedelia said.

He didn’t want to think about Molly and Walter, not yet. “You could have done something Hannibal, you always have. But you just.. poured a glass of wine to have a casual conversation while waiting for him to come in guns blazing.”

Bedelia’s mouth opened in a mild form of awe. “Oh my God.” Her head lolled back. “You were willing to die for him.” She let out a long, sighing breath. Will wasn’t sure who she was speaking to. It looked like she wanted to get up, walk away. Separate herself from the muggy emotional exposure. She couldn’t. She dropped her head down and gazed at Hannibal.

Will swallowed. On some level, he’d already known. But he actually had time to think about the full implications of it now. He poured himself another glass of water.

What would impart such desolation on Hannibal’s psyche to have him accept that particular death? After finally being freed, Will did understand the draw of destroying Dolarhyde. But afterwards Hannibal could have run away, hid somewhere. It would have been fairly easy, considering his skill at country hopping before.

Will’s line about rejection whispered to him. Then it hit him.

“No, that’s…” He shook his head, but the thought sunk deeper and bloomed into something sensical. “You… you really thought I’d known all along. That I had... _rejected_ you after Europe to manipulate you into turning yourself in. That I used your feelings against you.” Will trained his eyes on Hannibal, the most direct gaze he’d allowed himself so far. Hannibal’s smile was in the process of fading. God, was Hannibal really in that kind of in love with him? “If that’s true, if I’m right.” He shook his head again. “That’s not what happened, Hannibal.”

“You’re saying you didn’t know it was a possibility when you told me to leave you. Forever?” Hannibal said the last bit with a modicum of sarcasm.

“I was tired. Emotionally and physically exhausted. And I was really god damned mad.”

“So you were being spiteful.”

“No, I didn’t even..”

“He didn’t know, Hannibal.” Bedelia interrupted. “You should have seen his face. After all those years, he finally thought to ask: _Is Hannibal in love with me?_ It’s hard to believe someone with such empathy could be so obtuse.”

Hannibal’s concession to the admission was not verbal, a mere shift in the air. His posture stayed the same but everything radiating out of him grew warmer, intense. Curious and something else.

“When I figured out what you’d been doing I thought you were toying with me.” Will tried to explain, inexplicably. “Let’s see what we can get the profiler with an empathy disorder to do if we poke him like this.. if we tear everything away from him. If we try to twist and turn and taunt him.” Will sucked in a shaky breath despite himself. “But if you were also doing it all out of some form of… it’s not like you ever..” He winced at a glass hitting the table hard enough to break. He look down to see it was his own hand that had dropped in realization. “You _were_ going to tell me, weren’t you? In your own way. The dinner. Abigail.”

“You hadn’t already pieced that together?” Hannibal asked.

Why hadn’t Will’s mind opened to that possibility? He’d just seen it as another test to his mental capacity. Let Will stew in his grieving process only to bring Abigail back. How would the mouse react? Then there had been the idea, the hope, that Hannibal might have wanted to be his friend.

Will laughed when he touched the answer in his mind. “I put you on a pedestal even after that.” He leaned his head back in the chair, baring his throat. “I was seeing you the way you wanted to be seen. Thinking there was a glimmer of actual friendship between us. Looking for answers for my own questions. I had called you and warned you so you could be _free_ , Hannibal. Why didn’t that mean anything to you?”

Hannibal didn’t answer. He looked away and got up, picked up a carving knife and went for the main course.

“ _Don’t_.” The command was torn out of Will viscerally.

Hannibal stopped. “You’re not hungry?”

“Not a bit.” Will growled slowly, all teeth.

Hannibal stood still with the carving knife in hand. There was no indication of his thoughts. It gave Will’s mind a little time to settle. A purple haze began to glow around Hannibal in Will’s vision. Will tried to blink it away, which strangely made it feel like a moving picture when Hannibal moved again. Will’s heart jumped as Hannibal approached Bedelia, knife still in hand; it hiccuped weakly when he went beyond her back into the kitchen.

He was gone for a while. They were silent, Bedelia and Will not quite knowing what sort of hazardous ground they’d found themselves on. Will realized the instinctual warning in his gut implicated something else. Despite Hannibal doing what he’d always done, it was all… different. Something had changed. Bedelia had hinted at it. Hannibal would have had all the time in the world to let Bedelia linger in fear, to come back and haunt her. He’d never been an impatient man, except perhaps when Will betrayed him. Slicing Abigail’s throat in front of him as if he didn’t spend months with her, caring for her and loving her. Did he ever actually love Abigail?

Had he only taken care of her because of Will?

A sick feeling roiled in his gut.

Hannibal had just wanted to play house with Will, and when that image was ruined he wiped it all away. Like a child.

God, had he put Will on a pedestal too? They were fucked, the both of them.

Hannibal came through the kitchen door once again, this time carrying a steaming cup of tea. He walked to Will’s side, set the cup in front of him. “Ginger tea from Bedelia’s pantry.”

 _Not some_ essence of human _concoction, you mean_.

Hannibal’s hand lingered on the cup. Will felt himself getting angry.

He stood up despite Hannibal’s close proximity. His chair slid out from behind him, enough so that he could face Hannibal directly. He went for the cup, brushing over Hannibal’s hand and drawing the other man’s attention. Will continued though, picking it up and swapping it from one hand to the other. The hot liquid spilled over his fingers, and it hurt, but he didn’t let it show.

He dropped the teacup. It shattered prettily. The hot liquid spat up at both their pant legs.

Hannibal looked like he wanted to move away. Will gripped his jaw with his dripping wet hand and kept him looking right in his eyes. “How many times has that happened to you Hannibal?” Hannibal’s hands were open, taught, at his sides. He didn’t answer. “How many times has it happened between us?” His grip tightened. “And yet we’re still here, you selfish bastard. Hardly anything happens the way you plan it. That’s life. But you’ve found ways to get around that, haven’t you? To control the outcome, or as close to. Brainwash us, drug and kill us so we can’t fight back. Makes it easy to get us to do what you want, yeah?” His hand dropped, grazing over Hannibal’s neck and heart. “ _That’s_ your design?” He asked, disgusted.

“Is that what you see now?” Hannibal asked roughly. Will could feel the vibration of his words through his chest, so he stepped back and dropped his hands.

“Take away your intelligence and worldliness, what do you get?”

“A monster, I suspect.”

“No, a child.” At that, Will saw Hannibal waver slightly. It was a small thing, but noticeable.

“There is a child in all of us, our complexes and basic wants and needs. Trauma freezes our coping mechanisms in the past, it’s uncontrollable.”

“Bullshit.” Will said, lips quivering to his annoyance. “ _Bullshit_ .” His voice got that sad, raspy tone to it that implied he was probably about to cry. He wasn’t going to let himself, _he wouldn’t_.

Hannibal’s warm thumb swiped at a tear. This close, Will could box out the rest of the world for a few moments if he wanted to. When he looked up at Hannibal, he saw so far into him it made his heart and breath stutter. There was sadness, confusion, an apology…

Will shoved away from him, glassware clattering and falling over behind him.

“You killed people who had no way of defending themselves or understanding what they were up against. Is that supposed to be impressive? You killed them because they didn’t, what, live up to your _social graces_? Because you thought them swine, like Verger? I could have… could have reconciled you killing people who deserved it but…” He felt exhaustion hit him.

“I don’t expect you to understand.” Hannibal said, bizarrely.

Will laughed an ugly, angry sound. “ _Now_ , you mean? You don’t expect me to understand anymore? Well thanks for letting me off the hook, Hannibal, but the problem is that I do understand. I just _don’t agree with you_ . I see you. I see that you murder and eat people, and I’ll never think the way you do it or who you do it to is… is _okay_ .” He took a step forward. “The thing I don’t understand, to the point I couldn’t even fully see it, is why you’re so interested in _me_ . Out of all of the people who have come and gone in your life, you latched onto someone with a deep moral center. I’d wonder if I were the flavor of the week if it hasn’t been _years_.”

His statement echoed for a little while in his ears until there was only silence and the sensation of his entire body shaking. He felt raw, he felt fear in the pit of his stomach and up his back and through his limbs. Through his chest, like just after a panic attack. That phantom weakness, that pain suffocating his heart. He had never, ever been this emotionally connected to a person. Certainly not with them returning this insane feeling.

“The heart wants what it wants, Will.” Bedelia’s smooth voice didn’t upset the balance, just kept them from tipping over again.

“Hannibal.” He pleaded, voice wrecked. _Are you in love with me?_ He was too overwhelmed to ask it.

Hannibal’s lips thinned briefly. His chest was rising and falling a little more noticeably. “Yes, I...” He didn’t say it, and as much of a cliche as it was he didn’t have to either.

Will sucked in a few breaths, lips parted. He didn’t know if he’d be able to keep himself upright for much longer, the exhaustion coupled with the multitude of emotions and sensations he was feeling. All of their interactions came rushing through him.

“When did you know?” Will asked, vision fuzzing. He was breathing too heavily, possibly hyperventilating.

“It depends on what you’d count as knowing.”

The doorbell rang.

Will settled back on the table, leveraging himself. He reminded himself that hearing the doorbell ring was probably an alarming development, but he continued to sit there in shock. Hannibal moved to answer the door, and Will’s heart moved sluggishly after him.

He turned slowly to Bedelia, whose eyes were wide with fear and hope. Will hoped for her too.

Hannibal walked back in the room with Chiyoh behind him. She bowed her head, but Will noticed in his haze how her sharp eyes tracked the leg on the table.

“Will.” She greeted.

“Chiyoh.”

Hannibal looked between them with that fake predator smile on. Will sort of understood, he didn’t really know where to go from here. It was all mucked up.

Chiyoh decided for them when she pulled a gun from her coat and leveled it on Hannibal. Without a word she pulled the trigger.

Hannibal flinched. Will forcibly dragged his continually lagging mind out of the muck and stood from the table. Hannibal twisted, pawing at his neck. There was a dart, he didn’t bother taking it out. He nodded to himself, and he stood still until the effects made him waver.

Will moved to catch him.

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this a while ago thinking I'd get more out of the idea. Didn't, but figured it was enough to post. Thanks for reading.


End file.
